Chapter 6

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_Earlham_, by PERCY LUBBOCK.

_9. Alice in Authorland and Penrod’s Five-Foot Shelf_

Alice in Authorland.

Stuff and nonsense!” said Alice, to the White Queen, flinging the book on the floor.

“Exactly,” the White Queen replied.

“Haven’t you anything a self-respecting person can read?” Alice inquired.

“A self-respecting person,” answered the White Queen, “would not ask such a silly question. She would accompany me into Authorland and make the acquaintance of the people there and learn to find her way about. Instead,” added the White Queen, cuttingly, “instead of bothering me. I am very busy.”

“Well, if you’re very busy, you won’t want to take me with you and introduce me to all those people,” Alice observed, a trifle sulkily.

“Of course I will!” The White Queen spoke with annoyance but also with cheerfulness, for she prided herself on seldom being one-sided. “I am never too busy to loiter. And let me tell you that when _you_ become too busy to loiter you will find everyone else too lazy to live with--and then what will you do?”

Alice admitted she didn’t know. The White Queen was in a great hurry because, as she said, once in Authorland it would only be possible to make haste slowly. They looked up the timetable and found any number of editions just leaving. As they were entering a compartment the guard came along, crying: “Here! You can’t go in there! That’s reserved for fairies”--but a very pleasant-looking woman who was already seated inside stuck out her head and said: “Oh, do let the little girl come in. Besides, she’s with the White Queen, who may ride anywhere.” So the guard let them in, with a good deal of grumbling, slammed the door and blew his whistle and they were off. The pleasant-faced woman smiled at Alice, and Alice took courage to ask:

“Are you a fairy, then?”

“No, my dear, but I write about them. It’s more fun than being one, really. My name is Rose Fyleman and I live part of the time in London and part of it in Fairy Hills--that’s the nice residence section of Authorland, you know.”

“What are your books, please?” Alice asked, primly.

“Oh, there’s _Rose Fyleman’s Fairy Book_, and _The Fairy Flute_, and _The Fairy Green_ and _Fairies and Chimneys_--all poems--and _The Rainbow Cat_, whom I knew very well and admired no end. He used to walk about the Child’s Garden of Verse--that’s the little village green with flower-beds in Fairy Hills.”

Rose Fyleman lent Alice some of her books to read on the train. The White Queen slept in a corner, but finally sprang up, crying: “We’re here, we’re here!”

“But the train isn’t stopping,” protested Alice. Rose Fyleman and the White Queen laughed. “Silly,” said the White Queen, “it isn’t a train, it’s an edition, and editions never stop in Authorland. You just jump off anywhere.” And with that she jumped. So did Rose Fyleman, pausing to say: “You won’t mind it. Landing in a heap of books is such fun.” Alice finally summoned her courage and jumped, too. A man six feet tall and over caught her nicely and set her down right side up. Then he very politely introduced himself. He was Frederick Arnold Kummer, he said, and it was his business to catch girls and boys and set them down right side up. “With care,” he added.

Alice thanked him and took the two books he handed her, _The First Days of Man_ and another called _The First Days of Knowledge_. “You won’t need these here,” he explained, “but you’ll find them very useful and probably interesting and maybe exciting when you go back.”

There was no trace of the White Queen, so Alice went down the road, picking her way among the books planted everywhere, until a white-haired and smiling old lady sent out her boy, Nils, to show her the way about. Nils said the white-haired woman was Selma Lagerlöf, and she had written for him two sets of wonderful adventures. He had been a rather bad boy and Selma Lagerlöf had turned him into an elf and later had sent him through animal land. “I’ll give you the books,” said Nils, picking out a couple that stood between two book ends at corners of the road. “Here they are--_The Wonderful Adventures of Nils_ and _The Further Adventures of Nils_.”

Alice thought she should like to go back and talk with Selma Lagerlöf, whose smile had seemed mysterious and wonderful, but Nils was bent on showing her the animals. Of these there were quantities, and Nils knew them all, it appeared, and their owners.

“That there’s Brer Rabbit,” he was beginning, when Alice interrupted to say, “You can’t say ‘that there.’” “Yes, I can,” he retorted, “I’ve just said it.” Alice saw he was hopeless, like all boys, and paid no further attention to his grammar, while Nils discussed the creatures, both wild and tame, all about. Some grazed peacefully, some were frisking and playing, and a few gyred and gimbled in the wabe like the slithy toves Alice had heard her friend, Mr. Lewis Carroll, tell about. Brer Rabbit didn’t in the least resemble the White Rabbit, being brown in colour and having no vest pocket with a watch and chain. Uncle Remus and Uncle Remus’s friend, Joel Chandler Harris, kept tabs on Brer Rabbit. Forrestine C. Hooker was feeding lumps of sugar to the Comanche pony named Star that she has written about in _Star: The Story of an Indian Pony_, and Prince Jan, the St. Bernard of her other book, stood gravely by her. Ernest Thompson Seton, looking more wild than his wildest animals, was racing about, trying to keep track of his grey squirrel, Bannertail, of Krag and Randy and Johnny Bear and Chink, of Lobo, Rag and Vixen, and especially of the Sandhill Stag. “It’s the hardest work,” he assured Alice, stopping for a moment to subdue his hair and wipe his forehead, “to observe all their habits. I simply couldn’t ever do it if I didn’t have wide margins in my books and make a little drawing whenever I noted a new habit. Bad habits in the lefthand margins, good habits in the righthand margins.” “But,” said Alice, wonderingly, “the drawings all look alike to me.” “You might as well say all animals look alike to you,” said Mr. Seton, impatiently. “But they don’t know good and bad, though; all they know is habits. Now, if children only had habits they would be as interesting as animals.” “I’m sure I don’t know,” answered Alice, doubtfully.

Nils had disappeared and the White Queen was nowhere in sight, either. “It’s a strange place,” thought Alice. “It is, indeed,” said a man who was busy painting magnificent pictures in most glowing colours. “It’s strange because no one ever stays long enough to bore you.” “Oh, is that it?” Alice answered. But she was really much impressed. She looked at the gorgeous paintings, each signed “N. C. Wyeth” and each outdoing the one before. She thought with secret ecstasy: “I’m only going to have books with his pictures in them.” Mr. Wyeth, who seemed to understand her thought, said out loud: “You’ll find others--Kay Nielsen and Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac and Noel Pocock.” Alice said, “Yes, no doubt,” but in her own mind she decided it must be because he was as modest as he was wonderful.

“Do you like boys’ stories?” asked a boy much older than Nils, who had come up suddenly. “Of course!” Alice responded. She looked at him more closely. “Why you must be the boy in _High Benton_, aren’t you?” He grinned. “I guess I am. I was only going to say, if you like boys’ stories--and all the girls I know do--my friend, William Heyliger, has written a new one, _The Spirit of the Leader_. It’s stuff like _High Benton_, a high school story. Great!” Alice was about to ask him for the book when all the editions began running past so rapidly that she became dizzy and screamed and shut her eyes. When she opened them a moment later, Authorland had vanished and she was back at her starting place and the White Queen was asking with sharpness:

“Have you been all this time deciding on something to read? You have to read, you know, in order to grow up; and at this rate you’ll never grow up at all!”

Penrod’s Five-Foot Shelf.

Feeling the need of solitude, Penrod Schofield moved slowly toward the barn. As he walked he kicked desultorily at such objects, animate and inanimate, as obtruded themselves in his path--the round top of the water cutoff in the lawn, on which he had broken the blades of the lawn mower last Saturday; a bag of clothes pins reposing harmlessly on its side, and the white cat, Sherlock Holmes. “Ole cat!” Sherlock, untarnished by the hostile toe, trotted off complacently. Creatures like Penrod were little in the life of one who had been victor over the hound of the neighbouring Baskervilles.

Choosing Entrance Two, the youth ascended to Apartment B-3 of the barn, a second-story location offering an outside window with no bath but with proper seclusion. Here on a conscientiously measured shelf of his own manufacture was the beginning of the Penrod Schofield Library. The shelf, constructed in his leisure hours, was exactly five feet in length, a noted educator having assured Penrod and others, through the medium of many full-page advertisements, that the books on a five-foot shelf could furnish the equivalent of a college education. With a passion for exactitude, and in pursuance of a further condition, Penrod was devoting to the books on his five-foot shelf a requisite fifteen minutes a day.

“Five feet divided by fifteen minutes a day makes--makes----.” The youth struggled for a while with this intricate problem in arithmetic, at length muttering: “I know. Y’ count the pages, and then divide by fifteen; no, by the number of pages y’ c’n read in fifteen minutes;--no, that ain’t right either, is it?” There was no answer; there would be none if he looked in the back of one of the books, either; and for a while Penrod had a doubt whether, on looking in the back of the noted educator’s head, any answer would be found there. He did not understand how the educator could possibly be right, nohow, for of course the first and indispensable item for any book shelf was the complete works of G. A. Henty. He ran his eye along these:

_Bravest of the Brave; or, With Peterborough in Spain_

_By Sheer Pluck: A Tale of the Ashanti War_

_With Clive in India; or, The Beginnings of an Empire_

Few, but still a beginning. A catalogue recently procured assured him that there were at least thirty-five more that he should possess. Allowing an inch per volume, which he had found necessary, fully three feet of the five must be reserved for the author of _By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic_ and other classical studies in the historical field. Still, the two feet remaining gave probable space for a coupla dozen lesser masterpieces. He examined the volumes already in place:

_Treasure Island_, by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

It had sixteen full-page pictures in colour, lining papers and a coloured title page by Wyeth, and was quite satisfactory.

_The Boy Scouts’ Year Book: 1923_

Penrod had belonged to a troop which had busted up and there was no use joining another as he expected to begin smoking shortly, anyway. However, this book was useful, containing stories and talks on sports and tales of true adventure and Dan Beard’s camping stuff and “Boys Who Have Made Good” and a bunch of funny stories and--best of all--all about radio.

_For the Good of the Team_, by RALPH HENRY BARBOUR

This was a brand-new, regular hot story about Stuart Harven captaining the football team at Manning School and his roommate, Neal Orr, and other fellows. Penrod regarded it as a slick story and nobody was going to borrow it from him for a darn good long while because it was brand-new and a hot story.

_Lochinvar Luck_, by ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE

One of those he-men, you said it, this Albert Payson Terhune and two-fisted and all, and writes the grandest dog stories a fellow ever gets hold of, no Black Beauty here-nice-doggie story but a corkin’ story about how Jamie Mackellar, a plucky little truck driver, mortgages his truck to own a fine th’rough-bred collie and the kennel owner who is a crook stings him bad; but the measly pup runs away and lives wild and grows a wonderful bone and coat; and then Jamie captures him back and takes him to the show and what Jamie and the dog do to that crook kennel owner is some cautionary warning to all crooks.

_Fourteen Years a Sailor_, by JOHN KENLON

This here’s a good sea story, especially when they get shipwrecked on the desolate Crozet Islands and make a wonderful escape, hard to believe but it musta been so, because Kenlon he comes to New York later and sees a fire panic in a theatre and that turns him to be a fireman. Now he’s Chief of the New York City Fire Department, can you beat it? What wouldn’t I give to ride to a four-alarm fire with him, going like mad!

_Kim_, by RUDYARD KIPLING

Things in this story of _Kim_ I don’t just get hold of, but it’s a great story all right and I’ve read it twice and I bet I read it some more. Got to get the _Jungle Books_ and _Captains Courageous_ to put alongside it. Certainly Kipling’s the real thing, most especially on India.

_The Boy’s Book of Inventions_, by RAY STANNARD BAKER

Well, of course. A fellow’d have to have that, and the on’y thing was to get hold of the other, _The Boy’s Second Book of Inventions_ it was called, to go with it. Couldn’t have too many books like that which besides being useful, and the kind you c’n always get your folks to give you for presents, was interesting, like most of the books they give hardly ever are.

Penrod reflected. No use to worry. He had room for ’most twenty more books, anyway, allowing for Henty; and when he had read some of these enough he could give one away now and then. Or maybe start a circulating library, a cent a week, which would leave room on the shelves and bring in money for new books.... From the distance came a voice: “Penrod!” His mother was calling, and as it unquestionably was a call to supper, perhaps he had better respond. He moved away. “Gosh, my fifteen minutes was gone an’ I never read anything. Takes fifteen darn minutes a day deciding what to read. Maybe she’s got strawberry shortcake I c’d eat five feet of that no trouble at all!”

Books for Alices and Penrods.

It has become the fashion to try to classify books for boys and girls by ages, but as children’s mental ages, tastes, interests and other details vary not less widely than adults’, it is much more discreet to arrange the “juveniles,” so-called, by general characters. Books not explicitly named above are included in the following very limited and rather carefully chosen groups:

All About Animals.

MARGERY WILLIAM’S _The Velveteen Rabbit_, with colour pictures by William Nicholson. Unusual pictures drawn on stone by the artist.

MARSHALL SAUNDERS’S _Bonnie Prince Fetlar_ and her _The Wandering Dog_

ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE’S _Buff: A Collie_ and his _Further Adventures of Lad_

WILLIAM T. HORNADAY’S _The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals_

ERNEST THOMPSON SETON’S _Bannertail: The Story of a Grey Squirrel_, his _Wild Animals I Have Known_, his _Lives of the Hunted_--all illustrated by the author.

JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS’S _Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings_, with 112 illustrations by A. B. Frost. Mostly about animals. It is important to have Mr. Frost’s pictures.

RUDYARD KIPLING’S _The Jungle Book_ and _The Second Jungle Book_ have been mentioned; likewise FORRESTINE HOOKER’S _Star_ and her _Prince Jan: St. Bernard_. _The Elephant’s Child_, _the Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo_, and _How the Alphabet Was Made_ are Kipling selections now published as separate small books

For quite little boys and girls there are the MAY BYRON books: _The Little Black Bear_, _The Little Brown Rooster_, _The Little Yellow Duckling_, and _The Little Tan Terrier_; and also books by JOHN BRECK, as follows:

_Mostly About Nibble the Bunny_ _Nibble Rabbit Makes More Friends_ _The Sins of Silvertip the Fox_ _Tad Coon’s Tricks_ _The Wavy Tailed Warrior_ _Tad Coon’s Great Adventure_ _The Bad Little Owls_ _The Jay Bird Who Went Tame_

Introducing Fairies.

All the books named above by ROSE FYLEMAN, including _The Rainbow Cat_

_Fairy Tales_ by the BROTHERS GRIMM, illustrated by Noel Pocock

_The Twelve Dancing Princesses and Other Tales for Children_, retold by SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH and illustrated by Kay Nielsen

The Fairy Ring Series: Andersen’s Fairy Tales illustrated by Dugald Stewart Walker--_Thumbelisa and Other Stories_, _The Mermaid and Other Stories_, and _The Garden of Paradise and Other Stories_

KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN’S and NORA A. SMITH’S _The Fairy Ring, with Children’s Bookplate_, and their _Magic Casements: A Second Fairy Book_

The Most Wonderful Pictures.

The series of classics illustrated in colour by N. C. Wyeth includes:

_The Scottish Chiefs_, by JANE PORTER, edited by KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN and NORA A. SMITH

_Westward Ho!_ by CHARLES KINGSLEY

T_he Last of the Mohicans_, by J. FENIMORE COOPER

_The Boy’s King Arthur_, by SIDNEY LANIER

_The Black Arrow_, by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

_Kidnapped_, by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

_Treasure Island_, by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

_The Mysterious Island_, by JULES VERNE

_Poems of American Patriotism_, chosen by BRANDER MATTHEWS

Among the books illustrated by Howard Pyle are:

_The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, of Great Renown in Nottinghamshire_

_The Story of King Arthur and His Knights_

_The Story of the Champions of the Round Table_

_The Story of Sir Launcelot and His Companions_

_The Story of the Grail and the Passing of Arthur_

The two books illustrated by Kay Nielsen are:

_The Twelve Dancing Princesses and Other Tales for Children_ retold by SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH

_East of the Sun and West of the Moon: Old Tales from the North_

Here are two books illustrated by Maxfield Parrish:

_The Arabian Nights_, edited by KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN and NORA A. SMITH

_Poems of Childhood_, by EUGENE FIELD

Some other books with especially fine illustrations in colour are:

_A Child’s Garden of Verses_, by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith

_The Wind in the Willows_, by KENNETH GRAHAME, illustrated by Nancy Barnhart

LOUIS DODGE’S _The Sandman’s Forest_ and his _The Sandman’s Mountain_, both illustrated by Paul Bransom

MARY MAPES DODGE’S _Hans Brinker, or, The Silver Skates_, illustrated by George Wharton Edwards

FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT’S _Little Lord Fauntleroy_, with illustrations by Reginald B. Birch

MAUDE RADFORD WARREN’S and EVE DAVENPORT’S _Tales Told by the Gander_ and their _Adventures in the Old Woman’s Shoe_, both illustrated by C. A. Federer

_The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha_, edited by J. B. TREND and illustrated by Jean de Bosschere

_Robinson Crusoe_, by DANIEL DEFOE, illustrated by Noel Pocock

_Stories from Hans Andersen_, illustrated by Edmund Dulac

_Stories from the Arabian Nights_, retold by LAURENCE HOUSMAN, with pictures by Edmund Dulac

_The Sleeping Beauty and Other Fairy Tales from the Old French_, retold by SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH, illustrated by Edmund Dulac

HAWTHORNE’S _A Wonder Book_, illustrated by Arthur Rackham

ÆSOP’S _Fables_, illustrated by Arthur Rackham

_A Fairy Book_, illustrated by Arthur Rackham

The Outdoor Life.

WARREN H. MILLER’S _Camping Out_, his _The Boy’s Book of Hunting and Fishing_, and his _Canoeing, Sailing and Motorboating_

_The Boy Scouts’ Year Book_ for 1923 or earlier years, as each annual contains outdoor information of permanent interest

_The Boy Scouts’ Book of Campfire Stories_, and the _Boy Scouts’ Book of Stories_, both edited by FRANKLIN K. MATHIEWS

EDWARD CAVE’S _Boy Scout’s Hike Book_ and his _The Boy’s Camp Book_

ERNEST THOMPSON SETON’S _The Book of Woodcraft_, his _Sign Talk_, his _Woodcraft Manual for Boys_, and his _Woodcraft Manual for Girls_

JEANNETTE MARKS’S _Vacation Camping for Girls_

DAN BEARD’S _Shelters, Shacks and Shanties_, his _Boat-Building and Boating: A Handy Book for Beginners_, his _The Field and Forest Handy Book_, his _The Jack of All Trades_, his _The Outdoor Handy Book_, and his _The American Boy’s Handy Book_

LINA and ADELIA B. BEARD’S _Recreations for Girls_ and their _The American Girl’s Handy Book_

Fiction.

JOSEPH A. ALTSHELER’S stories. Altsheler wrote seven romances (_The Last Rebel_, etc.), eight books in The Young Trailers Series, beginning with _The Young Trailers_; three books in The Texan Series (_The Texas Star_, etc.) and three miscellaneous Indian stories (_The Last of the Chiefs_, _The Quest of the Four_ and _Apache Gold_) as well as two of The Great West Series, _The Great Sioux Trail_ and _The Lost Hunters_. He wrote three stories dealing with the World War, but his French and Indian War Series (six books beginning with _The Hunters of the Hills_) and his Civil War Series (eight books, beginning with _The Guns of Bull Run_) are old favourites

RALPH HENRY BARBOUR. School stories. Besides fifteen not in any series and the Yardley Hall stories (eight, beginning with _Forward Pass_) five series of three books each--Hilton, Erskine, the “Big Four,” Purple Pennant and Grafton

WILLIAM HEYLIGER. The author of _High Benton_ and _High Benton, Worker_. There are three books in the Fairview Series, five in the St. Mary’s Series, six in the Lansing Series, besides the extremely popular books about Don Strong in the Boy Scout Series--_Don Strong of the Wolf Patrol_, _Don Strong, Patrol Leader_, and _Don Strong, American_

FRANK T. BULLEN’S _The Cruise of the Cachalot_, a classic for boys

RALPH D. PAINE’S _A Cadet of the Black Star Line_, his _The Fugitive Freshman_, his _The Head Coach_, his _College Years_, his _Campus Days_, his _Sandy Sawyer, Sophomore_, his _The Stroke Oar_, and his _Sons of Eli_

LAWRENCE PERRY’S _For the Game’s Sake_, his _The Big Game_, and his _The Fullback_ (Fair Play Series)

DAN BEARD’S _The Black Wolf Pack_

FRANK B. LINDERMAN’S _Lige Mounts: Free Trapper_

FRANCIS LYNDE’S _The Golden Spider_

LEO E. MILLER’S _Adrift on the Amazon_, his _In the Tiger’s Lair_, his _The Hidden People_ and his _The Black Phantom_

ARTHUR STANWOOD PIER’S _The Boys of Saint Timothy’s_

JULES VERNE’S _Around the World in Eighty Days_, his _A Journey to the Centre of the Earth_, his _From the Earth to the Moon_, and his _Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea_

RICHARD HARDING DAVIS’S _The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys_

JESSE LYNCH WILLIAMS’S _The Adventures of a Freshman_, his _Princeton Stories_, and his _The Day Dreamer_ (“The Stolen Story,” a newspaper classic)

FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER’S Young Journalists Round the World Series--_Plotting in Pirate Seas_, _Hunting Hidden Treasure in the Andes_, _Heroes of the Ruins_, _A Toreador of Spain_, _The Magic-Makers of Morocco_

STEWART EDWARD WHITE’S _The Adventures of Bobby Orde_

RUSSELL DOUBLEDAY’S _Cattle Ranch to College_, and his _A Gunner Aboard the “Yankee”_

O. HENRY’S _The Ransom of Red Chief_ and _Other O. Henry Stories for Boys_

RALPH STOCK’S _The Cruise of the Dream Ship_. The hobo seafaring adventures of a boy. A fine book, not nearly well enough known

LEWIS E. THEISS’S _A Champion of the Foothills_

CAROLINE DALE SNEDEKER’S _The Perilous Seat_. The story of a young Greek girl who saved her country

JOSLYN GRAY’S _Elsie Marley_, her _Rosemary Greenaway_, and her newest tale, _The Old Mary Metcalf Place_. Other Joslyn Gray stories are _Bouncing Bet_, _The January Girl_, _Rusty Miller_, and _Kathleen’s Probation_

MARGARET W. EGGLESTON’S _Fireside Stories for Girls in Their Teens_

E. F. BENSON’S _David Blaize_ and his _David Blaize and the Blue Door_

ISLA MAY MULLINS’S _Captain Pluck_ (founded on fact)

MARION AMES TAGGART’S _The Annes_, her _Captain Sylvia_, her _The Daughters of the Little Grey House_ (_The Little Grey House_ should be read first) and her _“Who Is Sylvia?”_ (a sequel to _Captain Sylvia_)

Mainly Historical.

FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER’S Romance-History of America Series--_In the Days Before Columbus_, _The Quest of the Western World_, and _The Coming of the Peoples_, each illustrated by C. A. Federer

NOAH BROOKS’S _First Across the Continent_. The story of the Lewis and Clark expedition

CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY’S _In the Wasp’s Nest_ (War of 1812) and _On the Old Kearsage_ (Civil War)

SIDNEY DARK’S _The Child’s Book of England_ and his _The Child’s Book of France_

BASIL MATHEWS’S _The Quest of Liberty: The Adventures of the “Mayflower” Pilgrims_

H. E. MARSHALL’S _This Country of Ours: The Story of the United States_

EVERETT T. TOMLINSON’S _Young People’s History of the American Revolution_, his _Places Young Americans Want to Know_, his _Fighters Young Americans Want to Know_, his _The Story of General Pershing_, his _Scouting on the Border_, his _Mysterious Rifleman_

Young Heroes of Our Navy, a series comprising ROSSITER JOHNSON’S _The Hero of Manila_, J. BARNES’S _Commodore Bainbridge_, his _With the Flag in the Channel_, his _Midshipman Farragut_, and his _The Hero of Erie_ (Commodore Perry); and MOLLY ELLIOTT SEAWELL’S _Decatur and Somers_, her _Paul Jones_, and her _Little Jarvis, the Heroic Midshipman_

_Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children_, edited by JOSEPH BUCKLIN BISHOP

RICHARD HARDING DAVIS’S _Real Soldiers of Fortune_ and his _With Both Armies in South Africa_

A. HYATT VERRILL’S _The Real Story of the Pirate_, and his _The Real Story of the Whaler_

STEWART EDWARD WHITE’S _Daniel Boone: Wilderness Scout_

BERNARD MARSHALL’S _The Torch Bearers_, a new novel of the time of Oliver Cromwell

RUSSELL DOUBLEDAY’S _Stories of Inventors_

Inventions, Games, Plays, and the Fascinations of Science.

A. FREDERICK COLLINS’S _The Book of the Microscope_, his _The Book of Wireless Telegraph and Telephone_, his _The Book of Stars_, _The Book of Magic_, _The Book of Electricity_, _The Home Handy Book_, _How to Fly_, _The Amateur Mechanic_

FRANK M. RICH’S _The Jolly Tinker_. How to make all sorts of things out of the simplest materials, how to mend shoes, repair books, make a cardboard loom, etc.

RAY STANNARD BAKER’S _The Boy’s Book of Inventions_ and his _The Boy’s Second Book of Inventions_ have already been mentioned

GILBERT T. PEARSON’S _The Bird Study Book_

FRANK M. CHAPMAN’S _Bird Life_, his _Our Winter Birds_, his _What Bird Is That?_ and his _Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America_

_Birds Worth Knowing_, by NELTJE BLANCHAN; _Butterflies Worth Knowing_, by CLARENCE M. WEED; _Flowers Worth Knowing_ (NELTJE BLANCHAN adapted by ASA DON DICKINSON); and _Trees Worth Knowing_, by JULIA ELLEN ROGERS

Game books by EDNA GEISTER--_It Is To Laugh_, her _Let’s Play_, and her _Fun Book_

_The Magic Sea Shell and Other Plays for Children_, by JOHN FARRAR

_Three to Make Ready_, by LOUISE AYRES GARNETT. Plays

_Ten Minutes by the Clock_, by ALICE C. D. RILEY. Plays

S. LYLE CUMMINS’S _Plays for Children_

Three Books for Parents.

FLORENCE V. BARRY’S _A Century of Children’s Books_

ANNIE CARROLL MOORE’S _New Roads to Childhood_, and her _Roads to Childhood: Views and Reviews of Children’s Books_. By the supervisor of work with children in the New York Public Library.

_10. The Man Called Ralph Connor_

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Once upon a time there was a Scotsman of Clan Gordon, those Highlanders ye ken of Blair Athol in the North Country, properly named with a God-fearing name, Daniel, and a fine, stirring preacher, too. Fire was on his lips but the flame burning in his heart was tender and you should have lived to hear him piping “Lochaber No More.” The pibrochs sounded something beautiful as he played; and when he stopped piping it was to begin relating wonderful old stories; he kenned them all. Away back in the 1840s it was he came out to Canada with other folk from the North of Scotland and fetched up in a Highland settlement in Ontario, Glengarry, in the Indian Lands. Full twenty years this man of God spent in Glengarry, taking a wife from among the Robertsons. Her father had come to New England first, moving on to Sherbrooke in the Province of Quebec. I could tell you a deal about her family; there was a cousin, Andrew Murray, of Clairvaux, led the Dutch Reformed South African Church; ye’ll have heard of Robertson Smith and he was another cousin; the writer M. M. Robertson was a sister. Mary Robertson taught philosophy as a lass of twenty in Mount Holyoke College in New England. They offered to make her principal on the death of Mary Lyons and she was duly considering for a while. She was of the Robertsons of Aberdeen, ye ken, and twenty-two years aged. But there was this young Highlander, Daniel Gordon of Glengarry in the Indian Lands, who was swaying congregations. Well, then, she turned her small, straight back on the principalship and married him, and went away from that pleasant place and company and fine position that stood waiting for her to live in the backwoods of Canada, a rare wild parish with the railway twenty-five miles off and a long journey to everywhere. She was a remarkable woman. Daniel Gordon took her to his home in the woods. In the year 1860 she bore him a son; they named the boy Charles. The laddie played about the square brick house with wide verandas that stood in a natural park of pines and maples, with a glebe of some twenty-four acres and forest all about. Two miles by a path through the woods took him to school in a clearing, and two miles back. They played games in the shadows of the pines. There was a rich green darkness and a curious coolness and a curious warmth there for them; the tops of the pines murmured like distant bagpipes and everything smelt sharp and sweet.

On a day when the boy was eleven Daniel Gordon went to sway another congregation in Western Ontario, taking his wife and the boy along, for that there were better schools for Charley to go to. What with this, and high school in a neighbouring town, the lad makes ready for Toronto and the University. He didna do badly at the University, though he was no sober-sided student. He sang in the glee club and played quarterback at Rugby football in the champion team for Western Ontario. Some honours in classics he got and went on to the study of theology at Knox College. He was not too strong in those years and capturing scholarships and prizes in the three years’ courses at Knox College did him no good bodily. So then it was settled he should take a year abroad, spent mostly in Edinburgh, where he could walk along gay Princes Street and see the grand sight of Castle Rock, or climb to Arthur’s Seat and look over the Firth of Forth with its speckle of green islands and white sails and the bare country of the Kingdom of Fife, or pace slowly down the Royal Mile to Holyrood, with every step a threefold memory and an historic lesson. I’ll not say this did him any harm, maybe, and what it lacked in one way he made up on his return to Canada, taking his brother and travelling deep into the forest on Lake Nipissing, they seeing no other white man for three months. To crown these journeyings and to confirm the habit of health Charles Gordon spent two more years at Banff. There, in the heart of the Rockies, he climbed mountains and rejoiced in wildness. “Yes, I ought to have been an Indian!” he used to exclaim.

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He was ripe to receive his call at last, and it came. It took him to a life of rough hardship as a missioner in the North-West, all among lumbermen and miners with a congregation to be gathered first, and sore deeficult to sway in assembly. He came well-shod to the work of treading out the harvest in the Lord’s vineyard. He could go into the woods and come out again, or face a man mad with drink, or comfort a sick mother. A tall, slender, well set up young missioner with no very much ruddiness of complexion and a thoughtful, serious face that could yet smile, for a’ that, with crinkles in the eye corners. You would know him for Scots by his look, but the rest is puir American. And he loved those men among whom his work lay. When, along in 1894 and him just well into his thirties, he was asked to a city church, he didna want to respond favourably until he saw where his duty lay. Well, then, he came to Winnipeg and to the ministry of St. Stephen’s because it offered him the grand chance to help those roughened men whose needs he knew. Ye ken, perhaps, Mr. J. A. MacDonald of the Toronto Globe newspaper. MacDonald had been a classmate of Charley Gordon’s and a year or two after Charley Gordon came as preacher to St. Stephen’s, MacDonald was owner of a new little paper called The Westminster and concerned with Canadian Presbyterianism--a frank experiment. Into the office of The Westminster dropped Charley Gordon one fine day. He was in a great heat for money to put into the foothills and the mountain camps. They needed missions out there; I’m burning up with the wish to write an article telling about those men in the pines and along the upland lakes, Charley Gordon tells MacDonald. I’ve facts and figures. MacDonald was quick to say, if Charley wanted to bring home his message to people and loosen the purse-strings, he had a duty to write the thing as a tale, paint a picture with lifelike figures and a warm feeling running through it all. Gordon minded himself of what he had seen and heard in such good plenty; and he went home and sat down to write a story of Christmas Eve among the lumbermen in the Selkirk mountains. When he was fair into it, he found himself carried back and away, so much so that in reading it through after he didna see what brother clergymen might make out of the ringing speech of some of his characters. MacDonald agreed, but sent to find out what name to put on the story. Gordon invented a name, Cannor, out of the first letters of “Canada” and “North-West.” MacDonald picked up the reply telegram and snorted disdain. Cannor, he commented, what sort of a name is that! I’ll make it Connor. And where’s a first name? Frank? Fred? Chris? No. Ralph? Aye, we’ll make it that. This was the birth and christening together, ye’ll ken. The tale of the lumbermen’s Christmas Eve in the mountains was later to become the first chapter of the novel, _Black Rock_, the first novel by Ralph Connor, that was read everywhere.

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I’ll not have to be telling you what it was in _Black Rock_ won so many readers for Ralph Connor. Humour and pathos are bound up in the lives the young minister of St. Stephen’s was writing about; ye could lay hold quickly of his sympathy for those men who were in some ways as helpless as bairns and were half-brutalised by their work and surroundings. It’s the effect they have on each other, too. Them picking up _Black Rock_ to read were struck with something fresh and wild and clean, withal. They sensed a tenderness about the feeling of the story, like heather softening the bare hillside, and more than a morsel of the everlasting hope in which men endure hard and lonely toils. The same held true of the books that followed _Black Rock_; for there had to be other books. Ye mind _The Sky Pilot_ and _The Man From Glengarry_ and _The Foreigner_ and _Corporal Cameron_ and _The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail_. Take _The Foreigner_. On the edge of Winnipeg, Charles Gordon found a Settlement of Slavs--Ruthenians, Russians, Galicians and who not. They lived in a grim little collection of huts, a dozen in a room, all huddled up, drinking and dirty and violent; and on them was still the shadow of tyrannies in the Old Country. Drinking and dirty and violent with a violence dark and beautiful, Charles Gordon found them. Aye, he found the huts and the men, and Ralph Connor that was in him found a story. Ralph Connor took the splendid young heart in Kalmar, the son of a nihilist, and brought it to fight its way out of the ruck of aliens and make for the new country beyond the Saskatchewan, where there is prairie and where the lakes lie on the surface of the prairie like jewels on a woman’s breasts. Then, in _Corporal Cameron_, was Connoring the first grand tale of the North-West Mounted Police, by a man who kenned them, as followers in his tracks scarce can be said to. A richt fine love story is this of the lad who was born in a Scottish glen and came to ride out in the Canadian blizzards; it’s furthered in _The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail_, which makes use of the half-breed and Indian rebellion of Louis Riel. But there’s a muckle I love in the book besides the adventure--Cameron and his gold-haired, plucky wife and the hesitant wonder of the first fine feeling of the lover. It fashes me how a man says what’s down in the hearts of such a many other men and women. Give me to understand how it’s done! Here’s the Reverend Charles Gordon dwelling this quarter century and longer in Winnipeg, building up St. Stephen’s and seeing it transformed from a plain chapel of wood into a handsome church of stone, with a church house where the young men without homes can live, and where there’s sewing and amateur acting and films and bowling every night of the week. In the daytime the Reverend Gordon will maybe attend court to help get some boy straightened out and become a guardian to him; or he’ll be at meetings in his church where revolutionary agitators are spouting the downfall of all institutions and then voting thanks to the preacher because, as they put it, he has given us an absolutely square deal. And after supper you would find him in his home at evening prayers with the three youngsters who appeared to enjoy their devotions. There’s no stiltedness in the man at all. He reads from Scripture concerning Paul taking Timothy with him to learn what were the problems of that day. And he closes the book on his finger to remark what a sensible, canny thing for Paul to do. Some of our theological seminaries, adds the father, shut a man out from contact with life, shut him up with professors, and when he comes out of his cloister he canna recognise a social problem if it walks up to him on the street. The trouble with me, he finishes, when I had gotten out of the seminary.

But he’s generous to a fault sore in a son of Scots folk. If his right hand is earning moneys with a pen, his left hand is spending lavish and free. There’s his salary as minister to the kirk goes flowing out several times over in gifts and helpings to people. I mind the year quite long back when the Presbyterian General Assembly of Canada was meeting in Toronto and Doctor the Reverend Gordon put down $10,000 so every missionary minister and his wife in the breadth of Canada might attend the General Assembly, expenses paid. Some of these men and their wives hadn’t been out of the woods in years. Ralph Connor knew what this meant.

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Then, when the Great War came thundering, our sky pilot stood up and said Canada must send a half million men. Many scoffed at him; but he was right, and we sent the half million and over sixty thousand didna come back. From St. Stephen’s there was an enlistment of close on four hundred, including the minister and five members of the Session. The dominie went in the spring of 1915 after the congregation had confirmed his leave of absence--Major Charles W. Gordon, chaplain to the Forty-third Battalion Cameron Highlanders of Canada. Many St. Stephen’s men were enrolled in this battalion and one of the members of the Session, Robert McDonald Thomson, was their first colonel. It was the Western Front--from the Ypres Salient, Sanctuary Wood, the bloodshed of the Somme and back again to Arras. In that time Ralph Connor saw the regiment shrunk from full strength to two officers and sixty-five men. He knelt down amid the roar of guns and the hailing of machine gun bullets to do last rites for his own men and comrades. Among them was Colonel Thomson. On the eighth day of October, 1916, the outfit stormed the Regina Trench on the Somme. Unable to advance, they wouldna retreat. So they died where they stood.

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_The Major_ and _The Sky Pilot in No Man’s Land_ are books ye’ll verra well recollect; likewise the novel of twa years back, _To Him That Hath_. Since ye hanna read it, it’s the new novel from the pen of Ralph Connor, I’ll just speak a word of to ye. He calls it _The Gaspards of Pine Croft_ and explains it is “a romance of the Windermere Valley.” A story of the life and moulding of Paul Gaspard, it is. Here’s a mon with two powerful strains mixed and fighting for mastery of him. From his mither, Paul inherits a rare sense of the presence of God; his father gifted him with a fine artist sense, and a bounding spirit, a passion for life to the full. The clash of the two men in the boy grows with him to manhood, so that after the death of his mither he stands between two women, who beckon different ways. Then when a great decision is put before him the mon takes upon himself a burden and a responsibility that test him body and soul. ’Tis a life and death struggle set in the grand country Ralph Connor makes his own. There’s the valley of the Windermere before you with the Gaspard ranch, Pine Croft, flanked on one side by a great bend of the Columbia River and on the other by a mountain wall of virgin forest. In this mysterious wilderness, the figures of Indians do come and go, touching the lives of the white people with disaster, with dread--with an unco beauty as well.

Books by Ralph Connor

_Beyond the Marshes_ 1898 _Black Rock_ 1899 _The Sky Pilot_ _Ould Michael_ 1901 _The Man from Glengarry_ 1902 _Glengarry School Days_ _Breaking the Record_ 1904 _The Prospector_ _The Pilot of Swan Creek_ _Gwen_ 1906 _The Doctor of Crow’s Nest_ _The Life of Dr. James Robertson_ 1909 _The Foreigner; A Tale of Saskatchewan_ _The Angel and the Star_ _The Dawn by Galilee_ _The Recall of Love_ 1912 _Corporal Cameron of the North-West Mounted Police: A Tale of the MacLeod Trail_ 1914 _The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail_ 1917 _The Major_ 1919 _The Sky Pilot in No Man’s Land_ 1921 _To Him That Hath_ 1923 _The Gaspards of Pine Croft_

Sources on Ralph Connor

_Ralph Connor, the Well-Beloved._ Booklet published in 1914 by George H. Doran Company. Now out of print.

_Silver Jubilee, 1895-1920, of St. Stephen’s, Winnipeg._ Booklet published by the congregation of St. Stephen’s Presbyterian Church, Winnipeg, Manitoba.

_II. Here, There and Everywhere_

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In his new book, _The Humanizing of Knowledge_, the author of that fascinating study, _The Mind in the Making_, James Harvey Robinson, says: “Personally I have reached the conclusion, after many years of teaching, that one should choose for instruction, whether one be dealing with young or old, _some phase of human interest rather than some field of scientific investigation_”--and he goes on with force and plainness to point out the defect of an educational scheme in which knowledge is imparted by going in and out of great numbers of pigeonholes. He is really pleading for methods of instruction that shall take account of the ordinary man’s interest in his world, and shall proceed by the natural process of mental associations instead of by artificial and arbitrary tetherings to the post of this and that “subject.” Seldom has the difficulty been put with more brevity, simplicity and general sweetness of temper, or in a way to give such decent courage to individual self-respect. “We are not many of us interested in isolated scientific facts of any kind. That species of interest, as we have seen, is reserved for the few. But all of us are open to the effects of such new knowledge as gets under our skins. And the great art is not to exhibit our own insight and learning but really to influence those whom we are aiming to influence.” There could be no better text or opening for a chapter devoted to books of many varieties, inasmuch as books have always taken, except where restricted by school formulas, the lines of human interests and the path of some natural association of ideas. In this sense, though teaching may need to be humanised, knowledge has never been without its humanisation. A James Harvey Robinson cannot write about science without being led into the absorbing history of the mind that is slowly achieving science. A Camille Flammarion, discussing astronomy, finds it above all things natural to relate his knowledge with man’s religious ideas. An L. P. Jacks, analysing religious doubts, moves directly over the border of so-called psychology into the sphere of conduct and behaviour, because the answer lies over there. A George Santayana employs poetry to state those portions of his philosophy which prose can scarcely embody with sufficient expressiveness; bases criticism on his philosophy and distils or re-distils philosophical ideas from all the varieties of his learning.

To take M. Flammarion, for example. His new work, _Dreams of an Astronomer_, could without any essential inaccuracy be styled “A Humanisation of Astronomy.” Here is a book produced in this French scientist’s eighty-first year, at an age where “isolated scientific facts” had lost all fanciful meanings and were seen only in their warm and present human significance. The point with M. Flammarion was not that we live on a poor little world in a vast universe composed of worlds within worlds and flaming suns and revolving planets, nor that this universe so immense is but an item of larger immensities. The point was in the significance of these facts to the heart and mind of a man or a woman. What does it mean as regards our attempt to know God? In what perspective does it place our aspirations and our efforts toward what we sometimes call “righteousness”? Flammarion gives the richness of his physical knowledge in untechnical language; in words that summon the imagination he constructs pen pictures of other worlds than ours. That we may have the value of comparison, he describes Venus and Mars--the latter possibly inhabited by creatures millions of years ahead of us in their development. This moving and inspiring book ends with a sentence that might serve as the quiet challenge of science to much of philosophy and religion. Says M. Flammarion: “Let us not be personal, like infants or the aged, who see only their own room, let us know how to live in the infinite and in the eternal.”

But this lofty idea needs translation into the terms of our finite existence and our character of religious beliefs. It finds it in such a book as L. P. Jacks’s _Religious Perplexities_. Like _The Humanizing of Knowledge_, this is a slender book that can be read through in about an hour and it is equally a book that is likely to influence a lifetime. It is beside my point that Professor Jacks is one of the greatest living philosophers and religionists; but it is a fact of the highest relevance that he writes as no one writing on these subjects has written since William James. The same power to pierce to fundamental questions--and answer them; the same lucidity of thought and expression are characteristic of the two men. Jacks exhibits the same tolerance of the forms of religious belief; and it is only after a discussion of “Religious Perplexities in General” that he closes with a talk about “Perplexity in the Christian Religion.” He says: “Far be it from me to set up an exclusive claim for Christianity. Anyone who does that goes a long way towards forfeiting his title to be called a Christian. Let each of us look for truth where it is most accessible and where it speaks the language he best understands.” He begins with the two ultimate questions that man asks himself: “Why are we here?” followed by, “Why am I--I, and not John Jones or James Smith--here and now?” The answer to the first is the need of the One to differentiate itself into the Many, proving its universality and its power to integrate and raise up the good. But, he shows, the answer to the second question is in the conduct of the individual. Insofar as I by my courage in the face of life justify my particular existence, I supply the reason why myself, rather than Jones or Smith, exists in my place, here and now. Faith is not a new faculty added to us, it is simply our reason grown courageous. As Carlyle repeated, we all must answer the alternative: “Wilt thou be a hero or a coward?” Professor Jacks adds: “No philosophy can relieve us from the responsibility of having to make that choice”--and religion, telling us our choice must be the heroic one, strengthens us in making it.

It is religion, I think, that George Santayana represents--Santayana who contrasts for me with that rooted countryman of his, Miguel de Unamuno. I have a love for both, the one tenacious of his soil and its traditions, the other early detached, flung into the New England of Harvard and William James, now lodged in Paris, and always with his roots feeding orchid-like on the air. It is inevitable that one like Santayana should bear his blossom in poetry and criticism and his fruit in philosophy-religion, or religious philosophy. Thus he calls his _Scepticism and Animal Faith_, “an introduction to a system of philosophy,” but it is so only in the literal sense probably necessary to secure the proper recognition from a too unimaginative world. The book, which has a charm unbecoming a philosophical overture, can be read independently of the volumes that are to follow it; but who reads it may be trusted to put independence on one side and “follow, follow.” Santayana as poet is possibly matter to consider in a later chapter of our book, but since, as he says in the preface to his _Poems_, their subject “is simply my philosophy in the making,” we should be privileged to a passing consideration here. “I see no reason why a philosopher should be puzzled. What he sees he sees; of the rest he is ignorant; and his sense of this vast ignorance (which is his natural and inevitable condition) is a chief part of his knowledge and of his emotion. Philosophy is not an optional theme that may occupy him on occasion. It is his only possible life, his daily response to everything”--call it religion, if you please, and regard its expression:

O world, thou choosest not the better part! It is not wisdom to be only wise, And on the inward vision close the eyes, But it is wisdom to believe the heart. Columbus found a world, and had no chart, Save one that faith deciphered in the skies; To trust the soul’s invisible surmise Was all his science and his only art. Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine That lights the pathway but one step ahead Across a void of mystery and dread. Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine By which alone the mortal heart is led Unto the thinking of the thought divine.

And to all who care for fine intellectualism neither arid of inspiration nor robbed of beauty and emotion I commend Santayana in all his books, those named and, of course, _The Life of Reason_, _Winds of Doctrine_, _The Sense of Beauty_, and _Character and Opinion in the United States_ and the _Soliloquies_ as well. For those unacquainted with the man, _Little Essays Drawn from the Works of George Santayana_, by Logan Pearsall Smith, may offer the readiest approach.

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The task to which James Harvey Robinson calls us has already been undertaken with the highest success by himself and some others. Among these has from the first been Edwin E. Slosson who now, with Otis W. Caldwell, the botanist and educator of Columbia University, has edited an admirable volume, _Science Remaking the World_. This book is so good and represents so intelligent a collaboration, that I hope it is only the forerunner of a number of similar volumes. In the dual editorship, Dr. Caldwell’s contribution was his working familiarity with every field of modern science while Dr. Slosson lent his magic touch of the born populariser. The fifteen chapters, eleven of which are contributed by specialists in various fields, deal directly along the average person’s lines of interest with such subjects as gasoline power, coal tar products, the modern idea of the atom, what we know of “infantile paralysis,” our present knowledge of tuberculosis, the lengthening of human life, the world’s health, botanical science, evolution, warfare against insects, forestation, the chemistry and economy of food, and those two basic foods, bread and the potato. Dr. Caldwell writes the general opening chapter and the chapter on lengthening human life with its special reference to Louis Pasteur’s work; as was desirable in view of the great popular success of his _Creative Chemistry_, Dr. Slosson contributes the discussions of gasoline power and of the miracles wrought from coal tar.

Our quest shuttles back and forth between the discoveries of man and man the discoverer. At every stage we have to consider not only what man has gained in the way of knowledge but his potentialities in respect of all knowledge. That is why we have such a succession of books as Madison Grant’s _The Passing of the Great Race_, those books by Lothrop Stoddard which are brought to attention in